Chapter 17

Marx groaned and then stopped breathing.

Jax panicked, placed her mouth over her brother’s, and puffed air into his lungs several times. She sat back a bit and said a new healing spell and breathed into his mouth again and again.

Jax stopped after another five breaths and went to try another spell when Marx gasped and shuddered. She scanned him again and knew the virus was dead in his system. He would need time to recover, and going by how sick he still looked, Jax didn’t think he’d eaten in many days.

David and Blair hadn’t been idle while Jax was trying to save her big brother. They went from room to room and got each of the kids to eat one of the choccys, after giving Hailey one first. Her enthusiasm had the other kids opening their mouths.

“The whole lot of them need baths and changes of clothes,” David commented to Blair.

“Hey, let’s just grab those two laundry sacks and turn them into cleaning bags?”

David grinned, and they did just that. Mike, who was eleven, was not as sick as the others, so he became Blair’s assistant, and David got Hailey. The kids were amazed when the two men tossed a heap of clothes into the bags, pulled the drawstring on top closed and shook the bags.

They then opened them and reached in to pull out a pile of clean and folded clothes. The kids then had to put them away while the boys filled the bags again. The sheets and blankets in the room soon followed.

Mike got the job of getting his twin brothers into the shower cleaned up. Brian and Bob were six years old and shared the room with Mike. By that time, the three boys had gotten a belly full of water while in the bathroom.

Once they were scrubbed clean, they were all feeling a lot better. They were astounded to find their room clean and tidy, and all of their clothes folded up and in their cupboards.

The beds were made with clean sheets, and the sickly smell of disease was gone from their room. The three boys were more than happy to get dressed in clean clothes.

David, Blair and Hailey moved onto the next bedroom. They found Gemma, fifteen, and Gale, thirteen, sitting up in bed, looking at their exposed skin to find it blemish-free. Hailey got the job of getting her older sisters into their bathroom and cleaned up.

While they were still weak, they relished the hot shower and getting clean. Like the boys, they also drank a lot of water and had to use the loo to clean out their systems.

The younger boys had joined the men in the girls’ room. They were soon putting away the clean clothes and stripping beds. David found another large laundry bag and spelled it so Mike could empty one bag while they filled the other bags.

Blair did the ‘keep clean’ spells on the room and put a crystal over the window and the doorway to help keep the spells active. He had done that in the boys’ room too.

The next room was Hailey’s and the toddler’s room. They had all chuckled when they saw the chocolate smeared all over his face and his thumb firmly planted in his mouth as he finished sucking off whatever chocolate was left.

Gemma took charge of the eighteen-month-old boy who was called Max. The kid seriously needed a bath, and Gemma decided a second shower was the fasted way to get him clean. The rest of them made short order of cleaning up the room.

“We had better tip the dirt out of these bags,” Blair sat to David.

David nodded, and their little crowd of helpers watched as the men tipped the empty bags over and several balls of soft, sticky mud fell out. Mike had to pick one up, and he looked at it curiously.

“Well, the dirt and yucky stuff have to go somewhere,” David explained to the kids. “Just like the bins in your room. All the dirt will be accumulated in them when the spells clean your rooms, so all you have to do is empty them once a week.”

“I like that spell,” Gale replied as she hated cleaning her room. “Do we get to keep those washing and folding laundry bags too?”

“Yes. We made three, so that’s one for each room,” Blair smiled.

“I’m hungry,” Bob said as he looked up at the big men.

“I guess that is our next job. How about we go to the kitchen, and Blair and I will see what we can scare up for you,” David told the kids.

He didn’t get any arguments from them, and they happily went to show the men where the kitchen was. As they trooped down the hallway, delicious smells met them and had them moving faster.

They found Marx nursing a big glass of limeade, and two more jugs of the cordial were sitting on the table with glasses set at their places with their plates and cutlery. The kids soon scrambled up onto chairs, and Blair poured.

“Where is Mum?” Gemma asked as she got Max into his high chair.

Jax shook her head, and a tear rolled down her cheek before she turned back to the cooking.

Marx looked at the kids and said in a rough, sad voice, “She didn’t make it. She was too weak to fight the disease. She died two days ago.”

The kids all looked at Marx sadly, but none of them burst into tears, and Jax did wonder why. While Prols were a hardy breed, Hana’s kids had just lost a mother but didn’t seem as upset as Jax would have thought.

Jax said with sorrow, “I’m so sorry, Marx. I’d have come sooner if I’d known you were sick.”